What to do with the waste?

The International Atomic Energy Agency is facing an insoluble problem: what to do with high-level nuclear waste while it is waiting to go into permanent underground storage. Even if no new power stations are built, the 429 reactors currently in service will continue to produce spent fuel at a rate the IAEA describes as “fairly constant”. Temporarily stored in cooling pools, it contains an estimated worldwide total of 250 tons of plutonium. This is equivalent to the current global stocks of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make 50,000 nuclear warheads.

A 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor produces 230-260kg of plutonium for every year it is in operation, and only 5kg of plutonium are needed to make one weapon. Some of the plutonium — plutonium 239, which has a half-life (the period over which its radioactivity decreases by (...)